Cherchez pour petit déjeuner avec Charlie au Caffe Aldo

April 6th.

The plan was simple. Finish off the excess of a 28th birthday with a nice bit of breakfasting the morning after. My companion was going to be Charlie Guérin, a Frenchman, and so I had proposed visiting Paris Cafe Bar. Simple, easy, apt.

The problem was that it happened to be a Bank Holiday Monday, and Paris Cafe Bar doesn't appear to open on bank holidays. Zut alors.

And so the search for an alternative began and we set off for Trafalgar Street, home to a mighty plethora of eating options. There was bound to be somewhere open here that I hadn't been before.

Sure enough, Caffe Aldo presented itself. In truth, I had eaten there before, on my birthday two years ago in fact, but I had yet to review it for this blog. And as many of us well know, two years is a long time in terms of cafes in Brighton.

I have known Charlie for a much shorter time than that. It has been less than year since he first arrived here, ready for an internship alongside Steve Kelly at Espresso TV. Hopefully he will be here for many more years to come.

Now the internship has finished, Charlie is looking for further work in media production. Our fingers are all crossed that he can find something and continue to live and work in Brighton. It's not as though he doesn't have the talent. Charlie has made plenty of his own films in the past, as well as helping to create a popular hack version of Metroid called Darkholme Hospital along with promotional videos.

Not only that, but Charlie also likes to make music. Going under the name Area XG, he has made some great electronic industrial ambience that you can check out on his bandcamp page. He hopes to perform some music at the next [beep] event, a monthly platform for local electronic artists to play their music and collaborate with other like-minded souls. Usually held at the Verdict, these nights are worth a look and are free to attend up until 7pm.

Passionate about his music, Charlie has thrown himself into the electronic scene. It is an enthusiasm and passion that he also brings to friendship. He is a very friendly and kind-hearted individual, equally charming and open. He is also quite adept at the game of petanque, but this was to be expected from a man who embraces many of the French stereotypical characteristics with open arms. I once bumped into Charlie walking down London Road and he was carrying a baguette under one arm.

Hopefully, with all his skills and good qualities it will not be long before Charlie finds the job that he is looking for, ensuring that the breakfast we had is just the first of many.

And so, the breakfast:

Veggie Breakfast

Veggie sausages, fried eggs, hash brown, tomato, roast veg, toast, and beans

Veggie Breakfast - £5.40

I remembered having a good time last time I ate at Caffe Aldo. Certainly the signs were good as we were greeted with the sound of new wave post-punk playing on the radio. It appeared to be a quiet morning, although shortly after we had sat down the cafe began to fill rapidly. Wonderful timing.

We were served just as quickly. The menus did not specify precisely was the breakfast was comprised of, and so when I was presented with my plate I was both pleasantly surprised and perplexed.

The inclusion of roast vegetables was welcome and refreshing to see. However, the quantity of hash browns (1) and baked beans (a metric shit ton) was bamboozling.

"Je suis Charlie"

Only having one hash brown would have been ok if it had been an exceptional hash brown but unfortunately it was not. It was all crunch and no flavour. Only having one hash brown would have been ok if the other carb component, the toast, had been especially good. Again, unfortunately it was not. The toast was average in taste and texture, making me rue the lack of multiple HBs.

In contrast, the beans were there in superabundance. Sitting there in their little receptacle, it felt almost as if they were there for other items to be dipped in, almost like a grossly underwhelming breakfast fondue. As the picture might indicate, there was far too much juice, diluting the flavour that was there. When I gave in and poured the contents of the receptacle out onto the plate, a beanie flood of biblical proportions swamped across the land. It was a mess.

There were some positives to be had on the plate. The two sausages had crispy surfaces that gave way to pleasantly soft flesh and notes of rosemary. The roast veg was varied, meaning that there were a number of different flavours and degrees of sweetness to play with. These were also cooked well and carried a uniform crispness to them.

The tomato was not quite as well cooked as these. As it was, it felt solidly chunky where it should have been soft and submissive. Also on the "not quite" pile were the eggs. The whites were fine and firm but the yolks were only slightly juicy. Considering the amount of beans, however, perhaps I should have been grateful for all the dryness I could find on the plate.

My abiding memory of this breakfast will always be the ocean of baked beans, excessive and dominating. I know I have sung the praises of beans on here and sung them often, but you can always have too much of a good thing. Here at Caffe Aldo, I definitely had too much of a good thing. Something has gone wrong if there's a component of your breakfast that you can eat with a straw.

Function: breakfast should not be perplexing - 2/5

Adherence to Canon: Yes

Taste: many problems here, not all bean-induced - 2/5

Value: a lot of bang for your buck (though it could benefit from less bang in the bean dept.) - 5/5

Presentation: to be fair, they've made the bean abomination look presentable - 3/5

Venue: pleasant environment, good music - 3/5

Overall: it's bean emotional - 2.5/5

Liaising with Lynsey at Silo

22nd March.

breakfast

[brek-fuh st]

It is unsurprising that something so homely, friendly, and familiar as breakfast should be so regularly referred to in a colloquial fashion. It is also unsurprising that these colloquialisms should make their way onto the menus and A-boards of cafes and eateries wishing to persuade hungry folk to fork out their money for a homely meal.

It can be surprising to see how this colloquial version of “breakfast” can sometimes be spelled.

For me, it has always been spelled “brekky.” No other alternative as ever crossed my mind. You need to get shot of the “a” and double up the consonants before the “y” to ensure that the sound of the “e” is short. I don’t know if there’s any technical English language science behind these feelings, but they feel pretty good.

What you don’t do is spell it “breaky.” Just look at words like “freaky,” “creaky,” and “leaky.” You wouldn’t want to associate breakfast with words like that. A haunted house, maybe, but not a breakfast. Weeeelll, ok, maybe carnivores might have something to say about “streaky.”

I don’t want be pedantic though, there is more important ground to be covered. Let’s just draw a line under this particular gripe of mine. I will write no more on the subject.

I couldn’t believe that Lynsey Jean spelled it “breaky.” For someone so talented when it comes to the arts of the kitchen to make such a catastrophic food-based error, well, the mind boggles. Perhaps it is for the best that she is making a dramatic change in her life by leaving behind the cafes and bakeries and heading off to New Zealand.

By the time this is up on the Internet, Lynsey will have arrived in New Zealand, ready to touch some glow worms, see some whales and to follow her dream of becoming a llama ffarmer. It is a big change to make, and like all big changes it is an exciting one that positively thrums with possibility. 

It also offers her an escape from terrible middle-management. To be fair, she had already escaped terrible middle-management by going to work at The Marwood, one of the finest coffee houses in Brighton, at times both relaxing and fiercely idiosyncratic. Its quirkiness is a matter of pride and is defended vigorously. Apparently a customer once asked a staff-member to turn down the music in the cafe, who then responded with, “oh sure, we’ll just get rid of the atmosphere.”

Rude? Perhaps, but not quite as rude or downright bad as the middle-management that Lynsey had experienced prior to joining The Marwood's coterie. The boss in question would sit upstairs, only engage with their staff through email (at times in a very threatening manner), and took away their tips. These are classic strategies for “how to be a horrible boss,” and it is unsurprising that someone would feel compelled to travel halfway around the world to get away from them as a result. 

It is a shame though, as it means that Brighton will have lost another talented soul. As well as being handy at crafts and musical instrumentation, Lynsey is a grand master of baking. Her cake creations have wowed the tongues and stomachs of many in Brighton over the past few years, and now the southern hemisphere will have exclusive access to these skills.

But before Lynsey headed off to the southern hemisphere, there was one thing she needed to do. A trip to Buddies was lacking from her resumé. I sincerely hope she managed to take a trip there before leaving Brighton. We had a nice breakfast at Silo, but Buddies is a monolithic institution. Living in Brighton and not going to Buddies is a bit like living in New Zealand and not stroking a sheep.

And so, the brekky…

Silo Breakfast

Sourdough toast with silo beans + slow-cooked eggs (w/ Espresso mushrooms)

Silo Breakfast - £6
(add Espresso Mushrooms - extra £2)

Silo's aim is to run with zero waste, achieving this through direct trade with farmers and by only using local ingredients that do not generate any waste themselves.

This mindset was not limited to the food. From the glass jars used for drinking to the furniture fashioned from plywood, everything felt salvaged.  One neat innovation was the projection of the menus onto the walls, meaning that the regular production of new menus is not required.

In addition to the homely aspect that this salvaging provided, Silo felt full of friendliness. Cheerful bonhomie exuded from the staff - prompt to clean up any spillages and on hand to describe each and every component of our meals - all the way to the toilets, where users are encouraged to leave messages on the walls in chalk.

A typical llama ffarmer. Lynsey's calling.

The sourdough toast (baked over 48 hours) was the perfect mix of soft and crispy, offering a crunch to the dish but not one that was so hard that it alienated the other ingredients. Our ever-fastidious waiter even pointed out what type of flour was used in the baking. I felt intimately acquainted with the sourdough by this point.

I was reminded of those wee rubber aliens that used to be all the rage over a decade ago when it came to the bulbous egg. You know, the ones that would always end up stuck to the classroom ceiling. The egg quivered just like one of those, yet was a thousand times more rewarding when its surface was pierced. It was poached and wasn’t shy about gushing thickly all over my plate.

The beans (homemade, of course) tied the egg and the toast together. Their tang was familiar, but the texture was reminiscent of a thick vegetable soup, sharing a size and mouthfeel with lentils. These were interesting beans and were the more rich and fulfilling for it.

The mushrooms were some of the greatest I have ever had the pleasure of tasting. Homegrown (what else?) shiitake shrooms that were so meaty and chewy, at times I was uncertain what I was eating. These were streets ahead of the usual. Added to this texture was a delightful saltiness, strong but not overpowering, that was reminiscent of the subtle hand that soy sauce brings to stir fries.

I also have it on good authority from Lynsey that Silo serves up the best black pudding she’s ever tasted.

Here was a truly mighty breakfast, served up in an environment that is not only friendly to the customer but friendly to the local environment as well. I was so impressed that I dragged my pals here on my birthday for brunch. Although it lacks potato, the finesse with which the other components were served makes up for this shortcoming. It is truly wholesome fare, a breakfast that is not only hearty but has a heart as well.

Disclaimer: Now, I was expecting to have some tomato with the breakfast. Unfortunately, I was informed by the oracle/waiter that they did not have any tomatoes in at that point in time. One of the perils of operating with zero waste, I suppose, is not having infinite access to all ingredients. To remedy this problem and to bring the breakfast up to the standards demanded by the canon, I opted to have some extra “espresso mushrooms” with mine to make up for the missing fleshy component.

I have since discovered that tomatoes are not a part of the general menu, and shall reflect this deficit in my rating.

Function: a warming experience overall - 4/5

Adherence to canon: No

Price: limited variety but high quality - 3/5
Taste: ruddy beautiful - 5/5

Venue: great vibes and intentions - 5/5

Overall: a triumph, hampered only by non-adherence to the canon - 4/5